Thursday, June 9, 2011

I like to go into details when it comes to this stuff, but at first I want to mention that diving into the sky and calling a bird looks really impressive. I still don't like the fact, that we're going to get yet another ocean type overworld, but riding through the sky seems to be an amazing feeling.

The small demo version of the Sky Temple on the other hand is pretty much default dungeon cost that we know from dungeons in The Wind Waker or Twilight Princess. It's all pretty linear and straight forward. You fight the Stalfos and get a grabbing upgrade for the Beedle. So, not all upgrades are optional, obviously. With the upgrade you open another door and there you'll get a key, which opens yet another door, which leads to the area with this Golden Sculpture key thingy and the door for it, which then probably leads to the Ghiharim boss fight (or maybe not, I have to watch more material). That's it. They even brought the ropes and swinging from The Wind Waker back (hated this one, because it was so slow)... Well, I was much more impressed with the demo last year, the forest dungeon area. Because this was much more open, you could go fight a Stalfos or take another path, which then leads to a large open area, etc. It was more non-linear and explorative. Which doesn't seem to be the case with this dungeon here. This is pretty much the same, that we got in the last two big console Zelda games.

Update: According to Zelda Informer the demo dungeon actually was non-linear, you can even skip the Beetle upgrade alltogether. So, I misjudged the whole thing and it makes me happy, that I was wrong in this case. Non-linear design is very important to me.

Now let's get to the details. There really will be empty bottles instead of just potions and there is even a new bottled item:

Fungal Spores! You get those from slashing these mushrooms, which is a natural addition, since you expect to get item from slashing stuff like bushes. Of course we don't know yet, what they will be used for. But they are in the demo.

And they talk about rupees. It was an issue in Twilight Princess, that there were tons of rupees and no use for them. Well, they already dealt pretty well with this issue in the Nintendo DS Zelda games, but they confirm here, that there will be also plenty of uses for rupees in Skyward Sword. I guess it already starts with the different shields, which you constantly have to rebuy after they break.

They also mention that there might be a musical instrument, but we already knew from the GDC trailer, that there will be an harp item.